Know-Nothing

know-nothing English Know Nothing Etymology Party members claimed to know nothing about the party when questioned. Noun Know-Nothing en historical US politics A member of a secret antiforeigner political organization in the nineteenth-century United States. en 1964 w:John F. Kennedy Immigration Policy w:A Nation of Immigrants https://archive.org/details/nationofimmigran0000kenn/ Revised and Enlarged w:Harper & Row 64-7830 899031989 71 https://archive.org/details/nationofimmigran0000kenn/page/81/ The legacy of the Know-Nothings lived beyond its life as an organization. The seeds of bigotry, fear and hatred bore fruit again in the years after the Civil War.The First World War led to another outbreak of nativism. A new group, adopting the program of the Know-Nothings and the name of the Ku Klux Klan, came into being, denouncing everything its members disliked—Negroes, Catholics, Jews, evolutionists, religious liberals, internationalists, pacifists—in the name of true Americanism and of “Nordic superiority.” Derived terms en Know-Nothingism en US politics Nationalism